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House GOP says sequester is leverage in next budget battle

Politically battered House Republicans returned to the Capitol this week bashing ObamaCare, even as they acknowledged their leadership wouldn’t again demand changes to the law in the next round of budget battles.

While they denounced the rocky implementation of the new healthcare law, conservatives conceded that sequestration — not ObamaCare — remained the party’s chief point of leverage ahead of the new Jan. 15 deadline for funding the federal government.

“We won’t see another government shutdown or debt ceiling confrontation, not in this Congress,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said. “Leadership has decided that there will be a market reaction, and they don’t want to get blamed.”

Yet with President Obama and congressional Democrats on the defensive over the flawed rollout of the healthcare law’s insurance exchange website, Republicans said they would continue pushing for a delay in the penalty associated with the individual mandate.

He and other senior Republicans took the Obama administration to task for the problems that have plagued the new insurance exchange website, accusing top officials of mismanagement and a lack of transparency.

“This ObamaCare exchange has been a complete and total failure, and it’s unacceptable,” said Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), vice chairwoman of the House Republican conference.

“The fact is we’re going to have issues about funding the government come Jan. 15. We’re going to have the debt ceiling we’re going to have to deal with again,” Boehner said later. “The looming problems that are affecting our country are still there. We are spending more than what we bring in.”

“We’re going to try to push for some substantial reforms on entitlement spending and our backstop is sequestration,” Salmon said in describing Ryan’s remarks.

A Ryan spokesman would not comment.

Democrats are looking to increase spending beyond the annual level of $967 billion that would take effect in mid-January under sequestration. They are expected to seek revenue increases in exchange for any entitlement reforms.

McConnell has said the GOP would try to lock in sequester spending levels, and other Republican lawmakers said Wednesday they viewed that as perhaps their only point of leverage.

“The sequester’s our leverage,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said. “I don’t know how much we have at this point. There’s not much beyond that.”